I have not written anything on Lebanon. I have until recently found myself with nothing to say, aside from “No.”
I have watched as reports come in of devastation of the countryside, again. I have read of women widowed, children burned to death, I have read the prevarications and the spin, seen the pundits split the hairs of civilianry. I have seen the old ugly accusations of anti-Semitism dusted off and hurled at anyone who opposes bombing without regard to the symbols painted on the sides of the bombs — the accusers themselves often the sort who would have jeered as the cattle cars passed on their way to Bergen-Belsen.
I cannot stop thinking of kisses.
I loved someone, long ago, who left someone she loved for me. She was smouldering and troubled. He was hurt. He was Lebanese, a Maronite, a sensitive and young man who did not understand why she had left him. She was a Russian Jew by ancestry, a New Yorker by birth, and she broke me as surely as she did him, but that came later.
She told me he had bragged to her that Lebanon would be invaded. Israel had enlisted the Maronites, Lebanese Christians, as allies. Tanks would roll over the border soon, he told her. I dismissed it as boasting to impress her, a man in his early twenties trying to raise his estimation in the mind of a woman packing her bags.
She curled my hair around her finger as she told me, and a breeze from the open window played over her. She was getting ready to leave for New York. I would meet her there three weeks later: There was a huge rally planned to oppose nuclear weapons on June 12. Israel invaded Lebanon on June 6. I read the news. I wondered if I should have said something.
And then came life, and loss, and the passage of years, and my heart scoured from the inside. I sought it out. A friend invited me for dinner; she was a gardener, planting vegetables and tilling soil for the rich who had no time, and we ate the hummus she had made from her mother’s family’s recipe, handed down for a few generations back in Lebanon. We watched from her balcony as the sun set over Bethesda, and a breeze raised the skin on my neck. She curled a finger in my hair.
How self-absorbed, how trite: an old man delves his memories for metaphor, the sufferings of thousands watered down, recollections of idle dalliance with which to trivialize reciprocal and escalating atrocities. But we are the same, we are the same. Arab and Jew and American mongrel, the same. Our lips part with little gasps the same, love and desire catch in our throats with the sultry air, our hearts aflame and numb to the certainty of coming wounds. We ache, the same. We long, the same. The same we lose sleep over our loves, the same we grieve our losses. Let us be honest: we kill ourselves. We kill ourselves.
Thank you for trying to find words. The present conflict is a little closer for me, but the conclusions are the same.
This was definitely worth the wait.
Thank you so much.
yes, we are all the same. we kill ourselves.
you’re not yet an old man tho.
roger
Great closing paragraph. Thanks.
Some days, your writing raises the skin on my neck.
Indeed, we kill ourselves.
Beautiful.
Indeed we do. Thank you.
Your writing is so beautiful it makes my heart ache. Thank you.
A simple truth so ably expressed.
Wish so many in the world weren’t so hell-bent
on self-destruction.
This captures it perfectly. Those who do not recognize that it is the same we justify the warfare, rationalize the atrocities, and perpetuate the hatred.
As all (and sundry) say: This is just beautiful.
But can I take this Yahoo! headline to mean that your writing on this subject is ready to take a more smiteful turn?:
Chris may become hurricane
As always, sublime. My boy crush only grows.
This is so BORING! When are Brad and Angelina having another baby?
The radio gives us the bodycount scorecard and the strategic calculus of the invasion. And thoughtful blog posts elsewhere always seem to devolve into screaming matches in the comments. You bring humanity back into it, with such simple things as kisses.
Thank you, Chris, as always.
Thank you Chris. I haven’t found the words I would like to say on this, and yours help. The level of hate flying around over this on the other side of the world wounds me, and the pain and death in both Lebanon and Israel break my heart.